Wish I Could Have Been There Quotes & Sayings

Her arms tightened around our daughter as if she was afraid I was going to snatch her away. "Get out."

"Katiebear, I'm so sorry."

"I hate you," she whispered, he eyes filling with tears. "I wish you were dead because then I could have my children back."

I stumbled away from the bed, horrified, and watched as she fell asleep as if I'd never even been there.

Jesus Christ, what had I done? — Nicole Jacquelyn

Sometimes I think this job is going to kill me," Abby said. "Seeing what people have done, what people continue to do, to my Foxes. I wish I could protect you, but I'm always too late. All I can do is patch you up afterward and hope for the best. I'm sorry, Neil. We should have been there for you. — Nora Sakavic

But I can be alone without Yoko, but I just have no wish to be. There's no reason on earth why I should be alone without Yoko. There's nothing more important than our relationship, nothing. And we dig being together all the time. Both of us could survive apart but what for? I'm not going to sacrifice love, real love for any whore or any friend or any business, because in the end you're alone at night and neither of us want to be. And you can't fill a bed with groupies. It doesn't work. I don't want to be a swinger. I've been through it all and nothing works better than to have someone you love hold you. — John Lennon

I wish I could have been there to tell you to never trust a boy with star eyes. They blind you like a deer in headlights." I — Zoraida Cordova

She sat down about two yards away from him, near a large wandering jew. "I first heard about it at the faculty wives' tea." "Everything is discussed there. I'm aware of that." "Of course I would be the last to know. Wives always are." "Come, come, Clara, my patience and my time are running out." Without warning he lifted up one of her hand-painted china cake plates and threw it against the wall. The outrage snapped the tension in the room, and she could weep now with some mild comfort, but without, he could see, any shock or concern for the priceless plate. (Aunt Clayburn) "You admit then you have a lover," she said, examining the broken pieces of china, from her chair. "I don't admit any such god damned thing," he scoffed. "The ladies were certainly sold on the truth of it." "I wish I had the nerve to have a lover. I might have been a better writer. — James Purdy

Dear John,
There's so much I want to say to you, but I'm not sure where I should begin. Should I start by telling you that I love you? Or that the days I've spent with you have been the happiest in my life? Or that in the short time I've known you, I've come to believe that we were meant to be together? I could say all those things and all would be true, but as I reread them, all I can think is that I wish I were with you now, holding your hand and watching your elusive smile. — Nicholas Sparks

We got the best actors imaginable [in Kung Fu Panda]. If we could have made a wish list I don't think there would anyone else we would have added. Yeah, we've been blessed with exactly how amazing a cast of actors we have. To have someone like Bryan Cranston, who is not just an amazing actor, but who has such a range. — Jennifer Yuh Nelson

God, I wish you could have been there. — J.D. Salinger

There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause
I wish I could name every one
but with such women consecratingtheir lives, failure is impossible! — Susan B. Anthony

Reaching Out
I have given so much to things that weren't worth my time. When all along, it's the people I love that I should have carried. It's the ones I cared for whom I should have been responsible.
But maybe I'm too late. Because I don't know how to talk to you. I don't know how to ask you if you're okay. I don't know how to tell you I am so afraid of losing you. How much light would leave my life if you were no longer part of it.
I just hope you realize how much you mean to me. I just wish I could remind you of how beautiful you are. I'm sorry I haven't told you in so long. But please don't think I have given up on you. I will never give up on you. My arms are wide open. There is always a place for you here. — Lang Leav

I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss: the fear that she would restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I could have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then - if you don't believe me, you don't know me - till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head! — Emily Bronte

I've never been able to figure out what you're so scared of, but there's something in you that's got you backed into a corner so tight your eyes are closed against it," she says. "You don't have to tell me what it is. I bet you don't even know yourself. But here's the thing: I probably won't be around for you when you face it down. I wish I could be, but I won't. You're going to need someone. You won't make it if you're alone. I don't know of anyone who could. — Andrew Pyper

I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. It's just usually it's myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, it's just they are sick to death of being around themselves.
Jesse: Let's say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it's made me feel like I'm somebody else. — Jesse

He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell.
He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that. — Dorothy Parker

Cameron," Abby said in a whisper. "There are deer in the yard!" "Really?" he asked. "Why are you whispering? Can they hear you?" "I don't want to scare them off. Oh, I wish you were here. There's a baby. And a couple of deer look ready to pop. Not as ready as I look, but wild animals probably don't get this big." He laughed into the phone. "I told you, you're perfect." "If you'd been home another half hour, you'd have seen them. Cameron, there are six of them." "Any bucks?" "Just the mamas. And one baby." "That's a fawn," he said. "It looks like it's barely born. He's wobbling on his legs. Oh, I wish you could see him." He — Robyn Carr

There's mistakes that I have made. Some chances I just threw away. Some roads I never should've taken. Been some signs I didn't see. Hearts that I hurt needlessly. Some wounds that I wish I could have one more chance to mend, but it don't make no difference: The past can't be rewritten. You get the life you're given. — Carrie Underwood

I have a hundred-year-old aunt who aspires to sainthood, and whose only wish has been to go into the convent, but no congregation, not even the Little Sisters of Charity, could tolerate her for more than a few weeks, so the family has had to look after her. Believe me, there is nothing so insufferable as a saint, I wouldn't sic one on my worst enemy. — Isabel Allende

that's already been born. The jury is still out on these findings, but I believe them. All I have to do is think of Sophie, and how there are certain details I wish I could freeze in amber: her munchkin voice or her iridescent pink fingernails or the xylophone of her laughter. It's — Jodi Picoult

I would wish this book could take the form of a plea for everlasting peace, a plea from one who knows ... Or it would be fine to confirm the odd beliefs about war: it's horrible, but it's a crucible of men and events and, in the end, it makes more of a man out of you.
But, still, none of these notions seems right. Men are killed, dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are afraid and often brave, drill sergeants are boors, some men think the war is proper and just and others don't and most don't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?
Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories. — Tim O'Brien

I want to share my life with you, to be
monogamous with you, and my past is in the past. I wish there was some way I could prove it to you, once and for all. I do have a sordid past, but I've never lied to any of the women I've been with, and I've never promised to anyone the things I promise to you. — R.K. Lilley

The houses have been condemned on Memory Lane
I'm tired of this struggle that leaves everything the same
I've tried so hard to make it work
that I'm dying inside
Well, you can take my past
But you can't have my tomorrow

Promises that remain promises are useless and they're cheap
I wish I could put a price on words so I could make them keep
I put so much faith in you
I lost all my faith in me
Well, you can take my past
But you can't have my tomorrow

I'm giving up on giving up
I can't leave it all to prayer
'Cause the first step in getting better
is knowing what's not there
You said you'd make it better
and that just makes it worse
Well, you can take my past
But you can't have my tomorrow

Yes, I want my life to last
So you can't have my tomorrow
No, you can't have my tomorrow — David Levithan

Or maybe I was trying to break out of my skin, thinking about how my parents had been actors in roles and the roles were to be my father and mother-and the reason I could see those as roles was that in such extremes, in private, they must have let down their guard and expressed their doubts, their fears, the extent of their despair or hopelessness as our situation worsened and the world revealed the outlines of its true harshness. But because of me, there were whole eternities of hours each day when they had to pretend otherwise, and how I wish I could go back and tell them not to do that. That all I wanted was to see their true selves, remember their true selves. — Jeff VanderMeer

I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I have been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but there is nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could write books to amuse myself, as you can! How delightful it must be to write books after one's own taste instead of reading other people's! Home-made books must be so nice. — George Eliot

It with an E. We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite 'Mary, Queen of Scots.' I just put my whole soul into it. Ruby Gillis told me coming home that the way I said the line, 'Now for my — L.M. Montgomery

I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said.
But he never liked anyone who
our friends,' said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her.
Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight. — Virginia Woolf

Dear Bryony,
There are many things I wish I had time to tell you, so I will say just this: These past few
days have been some of the best days of my life. Because of you.
My fervent hope is that you are safe and well as you read this letter. That you will have all
the happiness I wish I could have shared with you. And that you will remember me not as a
failed husband, but one who was still trying, til the very end.
Yours always,
Leo — Sherry Thomas

If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's already been agreed even by the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky that the whole scheme is unrealizable in 'Judaea and Samaria,' let alone in Gaza or Sinai. But it's flat-out intolerable to be solicited to endorse a side-by-side Palestinian homeland and then to discover that there are sinuous two-faced apologists explaining away the suicide-murder of Jewish civilians in Tel Aviv, a city which would be part of a Jewish state or community under any conceivable 'solution.' There's that word again ... — Christopher Hitchens

I still have those childish moments when I wish with all my heart that I could wake up and find it's all been a dream. I really have thought that. I have felt-stronger than grief, stronger than anger, stronger than despair-the profound desire to return to the netherworld of the safer past. There are still flashes of unexpected sadness, the pauses that last longer than they used to. The desire for retribution, the fear of retribution. Like a death in the family, like a personal tragedy, an event like this lays bare the complexity of our worlds, internal and external. — David Levithan

I wish you could have been there for the sun & the rain & the long, hard hills. For the sound of a thousand conversations scattered along the road. For the people laughing & crying & remembering at the end. But, mainly, I wish you could have been there. — Brian Andreas

I wish there had been a music business 101 course I could have taken. — Kurt Cobain